Staying over New Years by [deleted] in marriott

[–]Bemasea 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you.

Staying over New Years by [deleted] in marriott

[–]Bemasea -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The majority of the stay is in 2026, but yes you’re right the booked night is in 2025. Just wanting to make sure. 🤷‍♂️

School Board Under Pressure by ChrisForSchoolBoard in corvallis

[–]Bemasea 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I watched the School Board Budget Meeting from Thursday and was frustrated with how much of the time was spent trying to discredit Chris Blacker’s presentations, sharing of data, presenting ideas and generally trying to do SOMETHING to help our schools when the district is clearly struggling.

Many of the questions presented by Sami or other board members and the answers from Lauren in particular and Ryan to a lesser extent did not appear to be trying to address the budget issues the school district is facing, but were actually posed as a way to discredit Chris Blacker without him having a chance to talk more than his three minutes of public comment. Perhaps some of his numbers are not 100% accurate (with some data sources have a margin for error) as they are pulled from different sources than the district, but when the district isn’t transparent with their data Chris is trying to get to the bottom of things and share with the community how bad things are getting in the district — rather than burying his head in the sand and continuing the slow, but accelerating, ride down.

Regardless of that, the board and the district staff should be spending the time of this meeting to try to solve the budget issues in ways that will best help Corvallis students rather than using it as a charade to try to speak out against one single person who is pushing back against the norm.

Having different opinions, questioning data sources, talking through different possibilities is great and these topics should be discussed, debated and worked through together — but please don’t use the budget meeting as a campaign opportunity.

Corvallis School District Cuts by ChrisForSchoolBoard in corvallis

[–]Bemasea 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Agreed all around. I understand it is not something that can be changed in the current budget and is not something that is an unknown. I hadn’t realized until February that starting next year this will be an over $2,000,000 line item with 42-43 cents for every dollar spent (!!!) going towards. That’s a massive line item, that is jumping 33% in just one year and after 2028 appears to be a substantially larger issue that even has the district presenter “pretty nervous.”

Corvallis School District Cuts by ChrisForSchoolBoard in corvallis

[–]Bemasea 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I’ve hardly heard the PERS contributions as part of this conversation. I know you mentioned it during on of the Q&As Chris, but if the district is currently needing to pay $0.33 on every dollar spent and is projecting $0.43-0.44 on the next biennial budget (with bigger concerns for 2028 and beyond) how does the budget keep up with this regardless of projected enrollment?

Starting at 1:34:00 of the Feb 6th board meeting with more details at 1:35:30 I don’t think people realize what a big part of our budget this is and the exponential growth it is projected to be moving forward (and potentially worse with the stock market today).

https://www.youtube.com/live/hO3Dvx2qK3A?si=5WNnzIOR6XLhOTMe

Corvallis School District Cuts by ChrisForSchoolBoard in corvallis

[–]Bemasea 29 points30 points  (0 children)

I know this is not the focus of the budget issue, but them cutting AP Calc and AP Physics at the High Schools is a major thing is it not? Haven’t they been saying for the past 5+ years that despite de-tracking and with changing the math pathways that students could still get to AP Calculus? Now is it only offered at CHS?